


Difficult Love

by Miss_Ash



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Brief mentions of Jack/OFC, F/M, but not in any way one might want to clutch one's pearls over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-10-29 14:28:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20798123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Ash/pseuds/Miss_Ash
Summary: The conversation itself had been like a tragedy in one act, right from Phryne’s first broken, “I do love you, Jack, I need you to know how in love with you I am.”He'd known, though, because he had felt it too, what came after.“It's not enough though, is it?”





	1. Jack

**Author's Note:**

> For some reason, despite the fact that I genuinely don't see it happening, my brain decided it wanted to know what Phrack deciding their differences weren't workable romantically and choosing to just be friends would look like. I suppose that's what fic is for though, right? Anyhoo, I promise a not-unhappy ending. Let's call the whole thing 'platonish'.

_"Whoever looks seriously will find that neither for death, which is difficult, nor for difficult love has any clarification, any solution, any hint of a path been perceived..."_

**\- Rainer Maria Rilker (translated by Stephen Mitchell)**

For the most part, Jack is just relieved that they have the conversation first. It's a bittersweet outcome but, God knows, if they'd lost control and consummated the tension between them first, he's almost sure it would have broken him. 

This is better. 

They'll never know what they're missing, and nothing has to change. 

The conversation itself had been like a tragedy in one act, right from Phryne’s first broken, “I do love you, Jack, I need you to know how in love with you I am.” 

He'd known, though, because he had felt it too, what came after. 

“It's not enough though, is it?” and her eyes had started to glisten, her gaze turning away. 

“I want it to be,” she had whispered, and he had closed the space between them, hating that more than anything – more than any of the heartbreak they were bringing each other he could not bear their distance. 

“Phryne.” He had squeezed and she had sighed and looked up at him and he had done his best to smile, given the circumstances. “Neither of us can be who we aren't, neither of us would want that of each other, either.” 

“I know. I don't want you to be anyone but you, Jack, and I won't be anyone but me.” 

“And that's okay, it just means that this… that us… it means we stop it here, before it's too late.” 

She had bitten her lip, eyes burning a hole in the wall behind his shoulder. “I agree,” she had finally whispered, and he had breathed a sigh of relief. “But, Jack, I don't want… we’ll still work together, won't we? We’ll still be friends?”

He had let out a small relieved chuckle at that, because it had been his biggest fear as well. If romance couldn't work between them then it would take time to move on, but it would be no different to when he’d thought she didn’t love him anyway. What he couldn't bear was the thought of losing her altogether. 

“I will always be your friend, Miss Fisher,” he had assured her, “and I hope that I will always be able to call you mine?” 

“Always,” she had insisted without a moment’s hesitation. “Jack, I will always want you in my life.”

He had allowed himself to smile. “Then it's really not so bad then, is it?” 

Phryne had smiled, too, and then looked up at him. “Can I...” she eyed his space, gesticulating gently with her hands. “Or is that…”

A part of him, a nasty selfish part that he didn't care to give voice to, had wanted to say no. Her gaze was tentative though, in a way so unusual and so not right for her, and he couldn't deny the comfort of her arms was all he had wanted as well. 

He had shrugged. “If friends can, we can.” 

And her arms had been around him, face buried in his neck, and he had let his own arms tighten, pulling her closer. It had been as he felt the dampness on his shoulder that he had given in. 

“I’ve never been as in love with anyone as I’ve been with you,” he had breathed into her hair, and she had tightened her grip on him. “And I don't regret a day of it.” 

“Nor do I,” she had promised into his neck, and he had kissed the top of her head. 

“It'll be alright.”

She had sniffed, then straightened up, pulling back a little but not fully letting him go. Then she had reached forward with deceptively steady fingers and brushed tears from his cheeks he hadn't realised he had shed, and offered him a soft smile that had made his heart tighten. “Of course it will, Jack. We will always be alright.” 

*

It comes slowly, the knowledge, the acceptance, the slight change of behaviours that sanity necessitates. 

The flirting has to stop, but it's easier said than done, and it takes them a good month or so before they really manage to start calming it. 

Jack doesn't think it will ever completely go away – and if he's honest with himself he wouldn't want it to, he's not sure Phryne is Phryne if she's not flirting. 

Little by little, they find a balance that doesn't appear to hurt, that doesn’t always tug on still tender heart strings, and instead just gives them reason to smile, a restored balance where they can both breathe easily. 

It's a Tuesday when they finally seem to crack it, they've been tracking a murderer for three days, and the final chase involves climbing over several garden fences, the first of which he instinctively helps her over, one hand slipping quite unintentionally into a decidedly non-platonic position. 

She lets out a soft gasp and he lets go immediately, apology ready on his lips – but instead she laughs, turning a salacious grin on him. 

“I'm not sure friends are meant to touch each other there, Inspector.” 

And to his surprise – instead of stammering out apologies or freezing in horror at having slipped up on this careful road back to normality – he simply rolls his eyes and offers out an arm to try again, which she takes with a smirk, and on the chase goes like nothing had happened. 

There's no awkwardness afterwards, either – once the perpetrator has been processed and the case is closed – they retire back to her parlour for whiskey and draughts and the evening passes in pleasant, light banter. 

The only difference to before is that when he stands to leave there's no put-upon pout, no seductive gaze that tells him leaving is the last thing he should be doing. Instead she stands, like a good host, and kisses him on the cheek as he heads out the door. 

It's easy, like they've done it a thousand times before without either of them stopping to let their touch linger or their gazes lock. 

“Goodnight, Miss Fisher,” he says, and manages it in a pitch that doesn't sound flirtatious. 

“Goodnight, Jack,” she says, and the words seem friendly and light. 

It's only once he's home, tucked up in his own bed with nothing but the dark emptiness of his room for company, that he admits to himself the truth. 

He's been pleasantly surprised by their civility over the last month or two, by their ability to continue in spite of everything just as they said they would. To act as they had done before, to be them without being _them_, it's all been remarkably smooth – remarkably easy – at least on the surface. 

In the silence of his room, with nothing to distract him from the thought, Jack realises that they are both much better than he'd ever have thought at pretending. 

*

The only real solution, he decides, is moving on. 

They had cut their losses on _them_ because of the vast difference in what they wanted, in who they were and how they operated as people. 

Jack needs someone to love him, just him, whom he can love with his whole heart. Phryne needs transient lovers who she doesn't feel beholden to, and he’s sure she's filling that need, so perhaps he should fill his own. 

Very briefly, he entertains the idea of turning back to Concetta – but even were she still amenable to the idea it would be cruel and callous to all parties involved. No, he needs to _actually_ move on. To find someone else to fall in love with so that he can just be Phryne's friend, so that they can be what they've agreed to be to each other. 

What he doesn't expect is for the opportunity to come so fast, as if fate – tired of all his melancholia – has decided to drop her in his lap. It does take Jack a moment to realise she's attractive, but once he has it’s difficult to ignore. Her eyes are large and warm, dark where her hair is light, flaxen, carefully coiffed and pinned beneath an emerald cloche. 

His first thought is that she looks absolutely nothing like Phryne. His second is ‘good’.

Her name is Teresa and it seems to fit really, since she is a nurse, and voluntarily risking her safety to help catch a killer. He allows himself to be interested, and when Phryne comments on it, she appears far more understanding than he'd have hoped. 

“I made a few inquiries,” she says, lounging in the chair opposite him that will always be hers, fanning herself with a file that is no doubt important – but never so much that he can ever bring himself to berate her anymore. 

“You mean you hassled Mac,” he counters with a raised eyebrow, and she shrugs. 

“Same result.” 

He rolls his eyes, folding his arms across his chest. “And what did you find?”

“Highly intelligent, would have become a doctor had she had the familial support, but is largely regarded as one of the best nursing staff in the hospital. Married young and was widowed in the war, no children. Lives alone.” 

“Verdict?” 

“Eminently suitable,” she says with a smirk. “And I liked her very much, which is what matters most, of course.”

“Of course,” he shoots back wryly. “This is all presupposing she’d be interested, though.”

Phryne tilts her head, shooting him a look. “Believe me, Jack, she was interested.” 

He lets out a soft sigh, considering. The leap has to be taken sooner or later, he knows, but there's a treacherous part of his heart that's reluctant. His eyes drift back to Phryne, eyeing him up over the papers in her hand, expression inscrutable. 

He still loves her, even nearing six months after they'd agreed to stop, but he knows he has to let go of it eventually. Teresa is beautiful, and intelligent, like Phryne had said. She had proved invaluable on their case and approached it all with a delight that almost matched Phryne’s – though personality wise she had seemed starkly different, and that too, he knows, would be good. 

He is interested, undoubtedly, but he knows he is also afraid. Afraid of what it will mean if he doesn't fall for her, of what it will mean if he _does_. 

He is afraid, but he knows he has to try. 

So he does. 

*

“Phryne!”

The house is quiet and Jack tries to tamp down the worry in his gut. 

It had been an odd phone call, Phryne on the other end not quite intelligible, not right sounding. All he'd really understood was that she was – for whatever reason – at his house, and that he should come quickly. 

The hallway is darkened, though there is light coming from the parlour – light he certainly didn't leave on – and he wishes abruptly that he had stopped to check out his weapon. He creeps down the corridor and takes the handle in his fist, turning it slowly, and pushing the door open.

As he does he is assaulted by shouts of glee, and it takes him several seconds to work out what’s happening. 

Immediately, his eyes find hers, and she is grinning – her own gaze full of joy and satisfaction over fooling him. 

“Happy Birthday, Jack,” it takes him another moment to realise that this has come from beside him, that the soft kiss pressed to his cheek comes from Teresa. He chastises himself internally and then turns his full attention to her.

“Thank you,” he says, and manages a smile that even feels mostly genuine. He leans in to kiss her properly and she reaches up onto her toes to reciprocate. She smiles at him again as they part and then hurries off to fetch him a drink. His gaze turns briefly back in Phryne’s direction – she has turned herself to talk to Hugh, but she glances back again as if she feels his eyes on her. Her own lips turn up into a small smile as they stare at each other. 

Hers is almost genuine too.

*

“You’re avoiding me.”

“I am not,” he says, though he knows it’s a lie. 

She grinds her jaw and pushes his office door shut behind her, striding forward and pulling off her gloves a finger at a time. 

“Yes,” she insists, throwing them down on the desk and collapsing into her chair. “You are.”

“I’ve just been busy.” He doesn’t know why he’s keeping it up. She sees through it, she always has, and yet here he is trying to outsmart her as if he really thinks it might work this time. 

He should know better. 

“Busy avoiding me.” Phryne removes her hat and places it on her lap, examining it carefully before returning her gaze to his. “Why?”

Jack sighs, putting down his pen and leaning back in his chair. He brings a hand to his face, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger as he thinks. Should he go with the truth? If he does there’s no easy way to say it. If he tells her a lie then he’s breaking a trust he doesn’t want to. He can’t lie to her, not really, he knows he can’t – but the truth, the truth is equally as horrific.

“Jack?” she asks, impatient, and he opens his eyes to look at her. 

Her entire exterior is the picture of calm, but her eyes give her away. Behind the irritation there is a deep set concern there, a particular knowing he recognises from the mirror that says he wouldn’t get away with the lie anyway. 

Truth it is then. 

“I am avoiding you,” he admits aloud, and she raises a single eyebrow in acceptance of his admission. “I have been avoiding you, and I’m sorry.”

“Good,” she acknowledges, and leans back a little, expectant. 

“I’m going to have to keep avoiding you, though, Miss Fisher, for the foreseeable future – and I’m sorry for that, too.”

The hurt flickers across her face then disappears again like a wave as she controls herself. Her fingers tighten around her hat. 

“Is it because of Teresa?” she asks, and he’s a little shocked to hear an edge in it. 

“No.” He shakes his head. “No, Phryne, it’s because of me.”

She says nothing, just waits for him to elaborate. 

“You know that I still…” he trails off, reluctant to say the words aloud. “It’s not working, you and me, it’s not working – you know that – and I don’t know what else to do. I’m trying to move on with my life but I can’t and I think it’s because wherever I turn you’re still there. I can’t escape you, Miss Fisher, so neither can my heart.”

Her gaze drops to her lap for a moment, and she takes a long breath, then she looks up at him again with fire behind her eyes. “You told me it would be alright, Jack. We _promised_ we would be alright.”

“I was wrong.”

She stands abruptly, pacing to the other side of the room. “Don’t do this, Jack.”

“I don’t know what else to do.” It’s the truth, plain and simple – by all rights he should be fine, they should be fine, and he should have moved on by now, but he just can’t. He doesn’t want to hurt her, doesn’t want to hurt anyone for that matter, but he doesn’t know what else to do.

“There has to be something,” she insists, turning back to him, something frantic in her expression. “There has to be a way for us to be alright.”

He shakes his head, and watches in horror as her eyes start to glisten. 

“Phryne,” he breathes, and springs to his feet, closing the distance between them and wrapping his arms around her. She clings to him, burying her face in his shoulder, and they stay like that for minutes that are both too long and nowhere near enough. 

“I don’t want to lose you, Jack,” she says eventually, the words quiet but heavy. 

“You never will,” he promises, “but I think this is the only way to be sure of that.”

“I don’t like it.”

“You think I do?”

She takes a breath, then pulls back to look at him. “I’ll miss you.”

“Likewise.”

“Promise me it’s not forever,” she says, voice firm, fingers heavy on his shoulder. “Promise, Jack.”

“I promise,” and he really means it. 

He can’t imagine life without her in it, he just needs the space they never took, or else he fears he’ll never conquer this. He also knows he’ll never move on without it – the ship has already sailed with Teresa, who should have been perfect for him but who he has treated far more unfairly than he is at all proud of.

He ends things with Teresa the next day, and she is kind and understanding – her gaze a little too knowing for his comfort – but he feels relieved nevertheless when it is done. Then he goes to see the Commissioner, and has an argument that lasts far longer than he’d hoped it would but eventually ends the way he’d wanted. 

He writes a letter, then balls it up, throws it away, and starts again. He does this three or four times until he has a result he’s reasonably happy with. He calls Collins in to his office and explains as best he can, then gives him the letter to deliver and says his goodbyes.

That evening he leaves for Sydney, he doesn’t leave a forwarding address.


	2. Phryne

_"...and for both these tasks, which we carry wrapped up and hand on without opening, there is no general, agreed-upon rule that can be discovered. But in the same measure in which we begin to test life as individuals, these great Things will come to meet us, the individuals, with greater intimacy."_

**\- Rainer Maria Rilker (translated by Stephen Mitchell)**

Jack’s absence goes in stages.

First, it’s awful, everything about it. She notes his presence like a ghost, haunting her, dogging her steps as she goes about daily life with constant reminders from her brain that Jack _isn’t_ _there_, that this is something he would enjoy, something they had used to do together, something that would be better with him there.

Things had been different, of course, once he had started seeing Teresa – his time more divided between the two of them – but she’d always felt like he’d been trying to maintain the pretence of normal friendship, at least, up until he hadn’t.

She’d understood, that was the worst part. Most of her had wanted to be angry, indignant, petty even, but she couldn’t bring herself to any of those things in fullness. Of course, she understood, because she had felt it too.

As it turned out, it had not been easy falling out of love with Jack Robinson.

This is why, when he first disappears off for Sydney, she’s nothing short of heartbroken. His letter is short but fair – reassuring even – he makes a point to insist that this isn’t forever, and he’ll be back in time, as promised. It isn’t enough though, she finds, in the darkness of night when she’s kicked another lover prematurely out of bed. It isn’t what she wants to read, what she wishes he would have said to her.

Some ridiculous, foolish part of her heart had wished for more – for heartfelt declarations, for words she’s heard aloud but has no proof of, written in black and white for her to reassure herself with whenever she feels like it might have been a dream. She knows there’s no point to them – they made their choices long ago – and yet she finds she wants them in his absence maybe more than ever, if only to remind herself that everything they’d shared had still been real.

The worst part, of course, is that she’s no idea when to expect him back. She does her best to sweet talk Hugh, the Commissioner, even the Mayor – but no one seems to know (her only solace in this is that they seem as irritated by this as she feels).

“All I know is Sydney seem far too pleased to have him,” the Mayor had said over his brandy, expression displeased. “That Marks sounded far too smug in his letter about Robinson’s influence on their crime rate – if we’re not careful they may not give him back at all.”

She laughs at that as if the thought amuses her, then promptly excuses herself to an empty room where she can smash her glass in frustration without witness.

Briefly, she hates him, curses his very being – for leaving, for not wanting her enough, for making her love him at all in the first place. Night after night she rants to Mac that she hopes he doesn’t come back, hopes he finds himself a nice, boring wife in Sydney and stays gone. Some nights she doesn’t apologise for these tirades. Some nights she cries.

Some nights she avoids the talking altogether and opts for dancing instead, opts for the feel of warm flesh under her fingers and the way that sex drowns out her sorrows for short moments of time.

Slowly, as the months go by, it starts to get easier.

The next stages are lonelier somehow, though altogether less draining. Jack is gone and – as the weeks and months continue to add up – she starts to suspect he may not return. The more she accepts that, the more the ache in her chest settles into a single point, like an anchor keeping her heart weighed down but at least allowing her to breathe.

She misses him, yes, that weight in her heart tells her she always will – but the anger has dimmed. Instead there is just a quiet longing that is far easier to subdue. She spends her evenings dancing still, or with Mac, but she starts taking the time to enjoy her liaisons again, to luxuriate in the sensual pleasures she so loves. She talks to Mac about cases she’s working, or what’s happening at the hospital.

Without decreeing so, talk of Jack becomes slowly outlawed.

He slips into a pocket of her heart that she dares people, with expression alone, to try and open every time his name comes up in her presence.

Sometimes, though, on nights she lies alone, she still takes out the letter, and foolishly wishes to see words there that she has started to question ever existed.

In the light of day, she always tells herself this foolishness was only a dream. 

*

She goes to Europe to see Jane, and it’s everything she remembered and more. She delights in the joys of Paris, Rome, London. She even makes a brief trip to see her parents (and regrets it immediately she sets foot through the door, but at least her daughterly duty is done, and she can report back to Aunt Prudence on her mother).

Jane is over the moon to see her, begging for details of Melbourne and all her friends. Phryne should have expected it, seeing that she’d failed to include any details in her letters, but it still somehow manages to take her by surprise when Jack’s name comes up.

Everyone back home is so used to not saying it – to avoiding the topic or dodging any mention – that hearing it aloud she realises how long it’s actually been since anyone did say his name around her.

It cuts much sharper than she’d expected, and it takes her just that second too long to respond.

Jane’s eyes narrow at her.

“What happened?” she asks, and the wisdom that each year of age brings to her expression almost astounds Phryne, the perception in her eyes far too piercing.

“Nothing,” it’s a terrible lie, but she feels it’s her duty. Jane is her daughter, and it’s not her job to listen to Phryne’s ridiculous troubles.

“Very well, I’ll just write to Mac and ask her to tell me.”

That being said, she’d much rather Jane hear her version than the no-doubt embellished tale Mac might relay.

“He’s in Sydney,” she tells her, and watches Jane’s eyebrows skyrocket.

“What on Earth’s he doing there?”

“Temporary transfer,” Phryne shrugs, as if it’s nothing, as if the whole thing hadn’t been because of her, because of _them_, because of all their foolishness.

“Well how long’s he been gone?” Jane asks, clearly not prepared to drop the issue, and Phryne hums, pretending to think as if she doesn’t know precisely the number of days and weeks it's been.

“Well, I’ve been in Europe five months now so… yes, about eighteen I suppose.”

“Eighteen _months_?” Jane demands. “How on Earth is that temporary? Is he coming _back_?”

Phryne shrugs, desperately nonchalant. “I’m not sure.”

Jane stares at her, hard, and then – to Phryne’s immense surprise – returns to her tea, saying nothing.

She asks about whether Phryne’s parents might appreciate another visit from her when she’s next on her holidays and Jack doesn’t come up again.

Only when Phryne is pulling Jane in for a goodbye hug before she climbs into her plane to start the journey home does she clutch her adoptive mother tightly and say, “I hope he comes back.”

Phryne says nothing but hugs her tighter.

Despite everything, she finds that she still hopes he will too.

*

Her journey home takes longer than expected – her brief stop in Singapore turning into a three week long mystery involving a dead diplomat, a stolen painting, and a very narrow scrape with a ‘pet’ tiger – but eventually she sets the plane down in Melbourne and is strangely relieved at her family’s greetings.

She is warmed by being home far more than she expected.

Immediately, though, she can sense that Mac has something to tell her. It lurks behind her laughs and inches into the corners of her eyes between anecdotes. When everyone else has finally retired home for the evening Phryne hands her a glass of whiskey and the opportunity she has so clearly been waiting for.

“Tell me,” she instructs, and Mac doesn’t even try to deny it.

“He’s back,” is all she says, and Phryne nearly spits out her own whiskey.

She doesn’t know why she’s surprised – he had always _said_ that he would be – had never actually claimed to be leaving for good. Except that the speed of his departure, the lack of communication, the length of time he’d been gone… it had all started to add up to a permanence she hadn’t wanted to accept, even though she believed it.

“Oh,” she says aloud, and she hates herself for it, but she can’t help herself but ask. “And is he – ”

“He came back alone.”

Mac raises an eyebrow at her and Phryne turns away, processing.

She can’t even begin to unravel what this means, nor what she _wants_ it to mean. Nothing has changed. _They_ haven’t changed. Even if they both still felt the same their reasons to not go down that road remain unaltered. She doesn’t know that she even does still feel the same – that’s not something she’s allowed herself to dwell on for a long time for the sake of her own sanity.

What she does know though, without question, is that she has missed her friend more than she knows how to articulate, and that – above all – that is what matters to her in this moment.

Mac waves her out of the door quite happily, and she is at his house in under twenty minutes.

He is as speechless as she feels when he opens the door, but she does her best, regardless.

“I don’t know why you’re back,” she starts, “or if it’s forever, or if you even want to see me but I… I wanted to see you, Jack – as a friend – and tell you… and tell you that I’ve missed you.” She lets out a breath that turns into a chuckle of nervous laughter as she finally admits it aloud. “I’ve missed you so much, Jack, I almost couldn’t bear it.”

Jack says nothing, just stares at her – and for the briefest moment she is afraid that he no longer returns the sentiment – but then his arms are around her and he’s holding her so tightly she can barely move to wrap her own arms around him.

“I missed you, too,” he whispers into her hair, and she sighs, unspeakably relieved.

“You’re home,” she says against his shoulder, as if she can’t quite believe it, and he lifts his chin, tucking her in beneath it, not letting go.

“I promised, didn’t I?”

“Took your time,” she needles, unable to help herself.

“Says the one who wasn’t even here when I arrived.”

She shrugs against him, smirking. “I was busy.”

“I’m sure you were.”

“There was a murder.”

“Oh?” he pulls back slightly to meet her eye, curious.

“It’s a long story,” she smiles, “it might take several volumes of retelling.”

It’s obvious bait, but he doesn’t seem to mind taking it. “Well, I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.”

She lets out another sigh of relief and leans back into his embrace, breathing him in.

“Whiskey?” he asks, and she nods.

“Whiskey.”

*

They manage to go several weeks of talking, spending as much time as they possibly can together, without really saying anything.

It’s a skill they honed long ago – and she’s equally delighted and frustrated by the fact that time and distance don’t seem to have stolen the ability from them. She wants to say everything to him, but at the same time, she doesn’t want to say anything at all.

Their equilibrium is so careful, such a fragile balance, and they are both waltzing around each other – delighted with the familiarity of each other’s company and yet somehow on a road that is strange and unfamiliar.

This is unchartered territory, so many things unsaid, and all of them unclear.

Before, at least, their subtext had been known to the both of them. Now she has no idea where he stands, where she stands, where they stand with each other. Their familiarity, she begins to realise, is nothing more than an illusion – the ghost of intimacy past.

Just like they had been every day since their first and final admissions of truth, they are still simply pretending.

It only takes her three weeks to crack.

“Jack?” she asks, and he looks up at her over the draughts board.

Everything about this scene is familiar, and yet also completely foreign to her. She hates it.

“We need to talk.”

He leans back in his chair, attention shifting from the game to her, one eyebrow raising, slightly amused. “Sounds serious.”

“It is.”

The amusement disappears, and he sits up a little straighter.

“I’m angry with you,” she begins – not at all how she intended to – and only realises how true it is once the words are out. “I know I shouldn’t be; you were clear about why you were leaving and you came back like you promised but I’m still… I’m angry for how you did it, and how long you were gone.”

Jack shifts in his chair. “I know it was sudden – I regretted that often, but I knew it was the only way I would follow through with it.”

Phryne sighs. It’s fair enough, and he’d left the letter after all. She shouldn’t be angry, and yet…

“I didn’t know when you were coming back, _if_ you were coming back.”

“I promised I would.”

“You were gone so long, though, Jack – and I had no idea where to find you. No idea where you were, if you were well, if you were even _safe_.”

“I could say the same of you on your latest adventure. I came back like I promised and you were gone – no one could tell me how long for either, and apparently you were unclear on if you even intended to return.”

She grinds her jaw. “I said I’d be back eventually,” she argues.

“Which in Phryne Fisher’s vocabulary could easily be at the end of days.”

“You were gone, it wasn’t like I was going to leave a note on the off-chance.”

“I _said_ I would come back.”

“You _hadn’t_, though,”

“I was always going to!” he insists, his voice growing louder in frustration, and Phryne’s anger only flares.

“Were you?” she demands. “Were you definitely? Or did you only come back because you failed to find the nice little wife you wanted?”

Jack’s face turns thunderous. “I didn’t go to Sydney to find a wife, Phryne, you know me better than to think so little of me.”

“Why did you go then?”

“You know why I went.”

“Yes,” she agrees, voice dripping in sarcasm. “Because your letter was _so_ detailed on that.”

“I was just trying to keep to the point,” he grits out.

“The point that you left to forget about me?”

“I left to try and save our friendship!”

“What friendship?” she yells, and the room falls silent for a moment until she speaks again, this time in a deadly whisper. “Drinking whiskey and pretending to be civil over board games isn’t friendship, Jack. This isn’t friendship anymore, it’s the empty shell where friendship used to be.”

Jack sighs and leans back in his chair, head shaking. “What do you want me to say, Phryne, that it’ll all be fine? That we can go back to normality?”

“Yes,” she admits, oddly desperate.

“We can’t,” he says, low and sober, and then stands – walking to rest his hands against the mantel, not looking at her. “We were fooling ourselves that we ever thought we could.”

“There’s no reason we can’t still be friends, Jack, we can be – ”

“No,” he interrupts, turning back to her, expression tortured. “No, we can’t.”

She blinks. “Why not?”

He sighs, and the action is heavy, weary, resigned. “I'm still in love with you, Phryne.”

There’s a moment of silence in which Phryne’s heartbeat quickens. “You are?”

“Of course I am,” he lets out a soft, humourless laugh, turning to face her again. “I thought being away from you would mean I could finally put an end to it and we _could_ just be friends again but I can’t… it won’t go away, no matter how hard I try. Eventually I gave up trying and just came home hoping that I could pretend again – but I can’t. I don’t want to pretend that I don’t love you, because it’s not fair – on either of us.”

She takes a breath, eyes fixed on him. She should be devastated, should be heartbroken that after all this time they’re right back where they started again with seemingly no way forward, but she can’t be. Instead she is stupidly elated, glad that – ridiculous, and useless as it is to their predicament – Jack’s heart is still hers.

“What if we were friends anyway?” she asks, and he frowns at her, confused. It doesn't make sense, she knows it doesn't – but she's out of options. They ruled out romance long ago and opted for friendship – but that solution has done nothing to help, only drive them further away from each other. He had spent all that time putting on a brave face and longing from a distance, and she – in all honesty – had done exactly the same. She had done her best to support him, to support a world in which they were friends and his heart wasn’t hers but, truly, she had hated every moment of having to pretend like she was happy to just let him go. She still hates the idea – and it answers the question she has been trying not to ask herself since she first learnt of his return. It answers it the way the pounding of her heart does at the knowledge he still feels the same.

Nothing they have done has changed what’s in their hearts – so denial, evidently, is not the cure they need.

Truth is all that's left.

“What if we were just friends who are in love?”

Realisation at what she’s saying dawns slowly on his face, and it gives her time to stand and cross to him, to take his hand gently in hers.

“I’ve had you in my life, Jack, and I’ve had you out of it. Whatever difficulties you might bring in it, I still prefer you there. I will always prefer you there.”

“I don’t know that I can promise it’ll all be alright,” Jack replies, expression wary though his fingers clutch at hers.

“I know.”

“Phryne, nothing’s changed, I still can’t be who you want.”

“I don’t want you to be anyone other than you, Jack,” she tells him plainly. “Even if it means we can’t have everything we both wish we could.”

“I don’t want you to be anyone other than you, either.”

She flashes him a smile she staunchly pretends isn't a little watery. “Then that’s alright, then.”

Jack is silent for several moments, thumb rubbing absently across the skin of her hand. “What do you need from me?” he asks eventually, open and curious.

Phryne considers it for a moment. “Honesty,” she tells him, “if you need space again. Reassurance when you leave. The truth if you’re not coming back again.”

“I’ll always come back.”

“You don’t have to promise me that, Jack,” she whispers, but he pulls her into him, dropping a kiss to her hair.

“I know,” he says. “But I will.”

She nestles in closer, face against his neck.

“Me too,” she breathes. “Eventually.”

“You don’t have to – ”

“I know,” she says. “But I will.”

“I love you,” he murmurs into her hair, and she smiles wickedly against his skin.

“I don’t think friends are supposed to say that to each other.”

“No,” he agrees, holding her tighter. “But I do anyway – and apparently that’s just the sort of friends we are.”


End file.
